The Technological Republic: A Bold Vision for Building by Silicon Valley
The benefits of cultural roots and creative wings
In the activity room in the basement of my childhood home hung a framed quotation:
There are two gifts we should give our children: one is roots, the other is wings.
Translated from a familial context to a societal one, this quote (whose origin is uncertain1) provides an apt summary of what I see as the core messages of the well-written recent book The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief and the Future of the West by Alexander Karp2 and Nicholas Zamiska of leading AI company Palantir.
The Technological Republic sets out an intentionally bold vision. Karp and Zamiska lament the lack of intellectual courage in contemporary public debate:
The problem is that those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. An overly timid engagement with the debates of our time will rob one of the ferocity of feeling that is necessary to move the world.
By the standard of their own criticism, they succeed. The vision of The Technological Republic is a bold and unapologetic one that evinces genuine ferocity of feeling. I don’t agree with all of it, but the viewpoint is distinctive and worth considering carefully.
Turning to the substance of the book, two key arguments stand out—about ‘roots’ and ‘wings’. First, Karp and Zamiska argue that a successful society requires cultural roots—and that ours should be based in the Western canon. Second, they argue that this grounding should provide the basis for commitment by companies—particularly those linked to the Silicon Valley ecosystem—to building for a national vision.
Before taking a look at these two arguments, and then offering some thoughts on what they mean practically, I’ll warn that they touch on issues that are currently highly politicized. This is not a political blog. Primarily, my aim in addressing these arguments is to give serious consideration to a book that makes important points about the future of technology in our society. In doing so, some political views inevitably creep in. I do not apologize for these, but I do invite you to disagree with me (including by offering comments below).
‘Clash of civilizations’ vs. ‘Orientalism’
The first argument mentioned above goes to the heart of the ‘culture wars’ that continue to roil many Western societies.
Karp and Zamiska discuss at length the widespread abandonment in the 1970s of university courses on Western civilization. Noting that it has become controversial even to define the ‘West’—as Samuel Huntington sought to do in his famous Foreign Affairs article “The Clash of Civilizations”—they lament that such controversy has “crowd[ed] out most serious normative discussions about the role of culture in shaping everything from international relations to economic development.”
The Technological Republic assigns central responsibility for the demise of the concept of Western civilization to Edward Said’s 1978 book Orientalism, which proposed that the Western view of the ‘East’ was an ‘Orientalist’ attitude based upon power dynamics and a demeaning view of civilizations of Asia and North Africa. They attribute pervasive influence to Said’s book:
The effect of Orientalism on the culture was so thorough and complete, so totalizing, that many today, particularly in Silicon Valley, are scarcely aware of its role in shaping and structuring contemporary discourse, as well as their own views about the world.
Since all cultures do need roots, I feel that Karp and Zamiska have got it essentially right that there is strong value in the concept of Western civilization, and that it is a loss that it had become difficult to assert and leverage this value in many societal contexts.
However, they also give less credit than is due to the valid reasons for questioning the power dynamic inherent in a monolithic view of the West. While countries of the West may grow stronger by leveraging their dominant cultural heritage, they can grow even stronger by cultivating the roots of the many groups that comprise our modern societies. Furthermore, rejection of multicultural views by the Western establishment is a recipe for continuation of culture wars.
There is a middle path between asserting primacy of Western culture and rejecting it as ‘Orientalist’. This path involves (1) drawing on the strengths of all cultures in our society, (2) without authorizing silencing of opposing views or obscuring their origin.
The first component of drawing on multiple cultural traditions has been a core strength of multicultural societies like the United States for centuries. And this strength continues. To take just one example, from the Silicon Valley environment on which Karp and Zamiska focus, Indian founders have long had an outsize role in successful tech start-ups. One could debate whether multicultural successes showcase the strengths of other cultures, or the strength of American culture as a ‘melting pot’ of other cultures. In my view, both strengths are important.
Navigating the complexities of a multicultural society is where second component—allowing free expression of diverse views—is crucial, and it is where Western society has recently gotten lost. The silencing of establishment views has been demonized by U.S. conservatives and libertarians as ‘woke’. While the details are controversial and contested, the basic criticism seems valid. As a law student at Stanford in the early 1990s, I lived through early days of this phenomenon—which we then called ‘political correctness’—and it since has gotten much more smothering. On the other hand, the Trump-associated backlash has itself taken a very similar approach, such as attempting to root out both public and private efforts towards diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) (which are generally laudable in their goals, if not always their means) and characterizing legitimate criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza as ‘anti-semitic’.
Little or no good is coming out of these battles, or from restricting free expression. We should end the culture wars, and start talking with each other again, across political dividing lines.
The thesis of The Technological Republic that culture has value to society becomes stronger if culture can also be less divisive. Karp and Zamiska recognize this, stating in the book’s preface that “a far richer discourse, a more meaningful and nuanced inquiry into our beliefs as a society, shared and otherwise, is possible—and, indeed, imperative.”
So overall, despite some differences with the views of Karp and Zamiska on culture, I find myself broadly in agreement with this first thesis.
Flying cars, 140 characters and military technology
The second key argument of The Technological Republic—and the core point of the book—should be less controversial:
The central argument that we advance … is that the software industry should rebuild its relationship with government and redirect its effort and attention to constructing the technology and artificial intelligence capabilities that will address the most pressing challenges that we collectively face.
Others3 have recognized the lack of public-mindedness of Silicon Valley. Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel is famously credited with saying: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”4 Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape and VC firm Andressen Horowitz, wrote in his pandemic-driven 2020 blog It’s Time to Build:
If the work you’re doing isn’t either leading to something being built or taking care of people directly, we’ve failed you, and we need to get you into a position, an occupation, a career where you can contribute to building.
The distinctive features of The Technological Republic are that it argues strongly for building in the national interest (rather than to satisfy consumer/customer needs) and that it makes specific arguments for the importance of building defense technology, in which Palantir is deeply involved. These are persuasive arguments. Most of our freedoms are enjoyed largely because we live in countries that protect those freedoms, and our countries require active support. And while defense technology is controversial for obvious reasons, few would disagree that national defense is an unavoidable capability, particularly in a world that has been appearing increasingly dangerous since the end of the ‘end of history’ bubble of the last decade of the 20th century.5
Nevertheless, Karp and Zamiska could likely have strengthened their argument in two, related ways. First, detailed examples beyond defense technology would have helped. Palantir itself works broadly on civilian applications, and many examples exist elsewhere. Second, their harsh criticism of Silicon Valley (and implicitly other centers of technology) could be more balanced. Most of the leading companies of Silicon Valley are building for the national interest, even if somewhat indirectly. The iPhone and Google search may not protect us from attack, but they contribute in many ways to a more effective, efficient and enjoyable society. And there are many companies aiming to solve serious human challenges, including health and climate change.6
Building a technological republic
Notwithstanding the criticisms above, The Technological Republic is an excellent and important book that challenges our society to do better in building for the common good. It provides a clear theoretical framework for strong cultural roots that enable powerful technological wings.
The next and big question is how the ideas of The Technological Republic can be implemented. The book offers a clear call to action, but it does not offer detailed ideas on how that action should be delivered. Applying the “Think global, act local” framework that I have applied in several recent posts, this is very much global thinking rather than a prescription for local action.
Implementing a technological republic will require decisions and actions by many thousands of entrepreneurs who heed this call to action, in a wide variety of sectors, solving a wide variety of problems, in a wide variety of local and cultural circumstances. As those entrepreneurs march forward, the bold ideas of Karp and Zamiska deserve to be heard and carefully considered.
The quote is often attributed but to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but investigation suggests otherwise, with the clearest antecedent apparently being mid-20th-century newspaper editor Hodding Carter.
Alex Karp was a classmate of mine in the Stanford Law School class of 1992. Alex was then a deep and passionate thinker, as he has demonstrated in this book.
The individuals quoted in this paragraph are associated with right-wing views, which should not be a reason to reject them, consistent with the points above in this blog. In It’s Time to Build, Marc Andreesen calls for building across the political spectrum, and calls out both the right and left for (different) failings. Furthermore, the right has done a better job than the left of articulating a platform of building, a failing which has contributed to the challenges that the left has faced in the U.S. and some other countries.
Multiple online sources identify this quote as the original 2011 tagline of the manifesto of Thiel’s investment fund Founders Fund. The current manifesto has a similar thrust, but does not include the quote.
I personally have had various projects and roles related to defense technology during my career. Currently, I am a director of the UK subsidiary of leading defense AI company Anduril.
The criticisms of The Technological Republic focus on the software industry, and many of these companies have hardware or organic components. However, practically all of them use software—and increasingly artificial intelligence—to a significant degree.